The 24 GB RTX 5080 Super is back on the rumor mill, now for early 2027 - and the card hasn't changed, only the memory bill has

Third time I've written the words "RTX 5080 Super" into a headline and the card still doesn't exist. The latest shake of the box puts it at early 2027, which if you've been following along is roughly a year later than the first wave of leaks had it. Same name, same spec sheet, new calendar page.

And that's the part worth paying attention to, because the spec sheet is the whole story here. Every leak of this card since 2025 has said the same thing: the same GB203 silicon as the regular RTX 5080, the same 10,752 CUDA cores, the same 256-bit bus. The upgrade is the memory - 24 GB of faster GDDR7 instead of 16 GB - plus a power budget that one PSU calculator briefly listed at around 415 W before the entry quietly vanished. In other words, Nvidia isn't waiting on a new GPU. It's waiting on memory chips.

That's exactly why I'd stop treating this as a GPU story and start treating it as a DRAM story. The higher-density GDDR7 modules a 24 GB card on a 256-bit bus needs are the same kind of silicon that the AI datacentre buyers are hoovering up at prices no gaming SKU can match, and the reporting around the delay points squarely at the availability and cost of those modules. If you've been in our forum lately you've seen the same thing hit DDR5 kits and SSDs: the gaming part of the market is getting whatever's left over, at whatever price is left over. A refresh card whose entire pitch is "more VRAM" is the most exposed product imaginable in that climate.

So here's my honest read for anyone holding off a purchase because "the Super is coming." First, nothing is official. Nvidia hasn't confirmed the card, the name, or a date - the most concrete thing anyone has is a CES 2027 reveal rumor, and a reveal isn't a shelf date. Second, even if it lands, don't expect a performance leap. Same cores, same bus, a bit more bandwidth from faster memory. In 1080p and 1440p competitive play, where the regular 5080 is already bored, that's a rounding error. Where 24 GB genuinely matters is 4K with path tracing and fat texture packs, mod-heavy single-player, and local AI workloads - real use cases, but not the ones most of us are chasing fps in.

Third, and this is the bit the rumor cycle never mentions: if memory is the reason the card slipped, memory is also the reason it won't be cheap. A product that exists to ship 50% more of the most contested component on the planet is not going to undercut anything. I'm not going to guess a number, because nobody has one, but the direction is obvious.

My advice hasn't changed since the first leak. If you need a card now, buy the card that exists. If you're on a 16 GB 5080 and you're not hitting a VRAM wall in your own frametime logs, you're not the customer for this thing anyway. And if you are hitting that wall at 4K, a used previous-gen flagship with 24 GB has been sitting on the second-hand market this whole time, with no box to shake.

I'll write about the 5080 Super a fourth time when it has a product page. Until then it's a memory supply chart with a GeForce logo on it.

Image: FreeMediaKid! / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nvidia_GeForce_RTX_5060_Ti_16GB,_PNY_Overclocked_Dual_Fan,_front.jpg